Video - Eating Insects - New Proteins for Farm Animals

It may not become your favorite dish, but in some parts of the world insects are considered a healthy and tasty source of food. In China animal farmers are using insects also as a low-cost and highly nutritious animal feed. Now nutrition experts are investigating how this protein-rich feed could be introduced to farmers in Europe.

When on April 7thWorld Health Day is celebrated, most experts will be blaming insects for the rising problem of vector-borne diseases. In some parts of the world, however, these little bugs are considered a healthy and tasty source of food.

What’s good for humans can’t be bad for animals. This is why the Chinese are breeding insects to produce animal feed. Nutrition experts from the European research project PROteINSECT are now investigating how this protein-rich feed could also be used by farmers in Europe.

The advantages are overwhelming: insects are cheap to produce, and their nutrition value for animals like chicken, pigs or fish are very high. But there are still some scientific and cultural obstacles that need to be overcome...